GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512 vs GeForce GTX 660

Intro

Compare those specifications to the GeForce GTX 660, which makes use of a 28 nm design. nVidia has set the core speed at 980 MHz. The GDDR5 memory is set to run at a frequency of 1502 MHz on this particular model. It features 960 SPUs along with 80 Texture Address Units and 24 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512		84 Watts
GeForce GTX 660		140 Watts
	Difference: 56 Watts (67%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the GeForce GTX 660 should theoretically be a lot superior to the GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512 in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 660		144192 MB/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512		16000 MB/sec
	Difference: 128192 (801%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 660 will be quite a bit (approximately 197%) better at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512. (explain)

GeForce GTX 660		78400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512		26400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 52000 (197%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 660 is a lot (approximately 256%) faster with regards to AA than the GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512, and also will be able to handle higher screen resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

GeForce GTX 660		23520 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512		6600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 16920 (256%)

Please note that the above 'benchmarks' are all just theoretical - the results were calculated based on the card's specifications, and real-world performance may (and probably will) vary at least a bit.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the maximum amount of data (measured in MB per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This is calculated by multiplying the total texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card could possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.